


the landscape after cruelty

by shortitude



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Also Raven and Bellamy being two little shits even when they're older, F/M, Ten Years Later, Weddings, Worldbuilding & Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 21:10:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4640343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shortitude/pseuds/shortitude
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years after crashing to Earth in a space tincan, Raven Reyes attends a wedding and wears a dress for the first time in her life. It's -- it's just weird.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the landscape after cruelty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [semele](https://archiveofourown.org/users/semele/gifts).



> Prompts were: 10 years later & "the landscape after cruelty". All mistakes are mine, because I wanted to get this one in before the end of the 23rd. Also, I'm sorry, but I can't seem to get it up when it comes to writing smut this round. But I loved the possibility for worldbuilding this prompt offered more than the idea of crazy hot sex. I mean, imagine it. For now.

_The wedding is tomorrow_ , Raven thinks, after what stretches out into twenty minute of blissful silence, and Bellamy’s hand rubbing circles against her back, over and over. It breaks the calm mood that’s settled in their little hut, pulls a groan out of her that spells out what her life’s been like for the past five months. 

Years ago – longer than a decade now, isn’t it? – when the Ark was still up and running in the sky, weddings were something only Alpha station people could afford, and marriage was something few people actually agreed to. With population the way it was, the idea of uprooting your life and giving up the chambers that belonged to your family for decades was hard, so many people had chosen to save themselves the bureaucratic hell. 

The first person to have brought up weddings in the first place was Clarke, which in hindsight doesn’t surprise her; Clarke grew up in comfort and clean bedsheets, rations that were slightly larger than the rest of the Ark’s. Her mother working as the chief surgeon, her dad being the head engineer; little children grew up wanting to be Clarke Griffin. 

In the years that have passed, their once Princess has grown accustomed to dirt under her nails, calloused fingers and bed bugs. But she remembered weddings, when the time came, and it hadn’t taken much more than one story around the campfire one night for Octavia to decide the village needed a wedding. 

In old days, Bellamy would later tell her, pressed up behind her in bed, his nose in her hair and his voice quiet and calm and rumbling against her back; in the old days, weddings were a business. People would invite allies, potential allies, even enemies to their children’s weddings, just to wave their prosperity around like a giant flag. (“Sometimes actual flags were waved, too,” he’d add.) Sure, it was all pomp and flamboyance where that could be afforded, often becoming more about their economic power than about the couple getting married, but generally they’d been considered fun. At least, that was what was written about weddings in all those books they’d brought in from Mount Weather, years before sealing it up for good. 

She could state with sufficient certainty that in this case, it was definitely about showing off economic power. 

Their village, though it has grown and expanded in the ten years – nine, nine years since the first huts were built on open territory, taking over no Grounder property or land – since the first huts were built, hasn’t got the size of a station from the Ark. Time, illnesses and wanderlust have conspired together to make sure the number of surviving Sky Crew isn’t threatening. Still, they have – currently, and likely forever – the best technology, and their crops have grown to the point where they trade with tribes that hear of them from word of mouth, presumably. 

Usually, every Grounder who ends up in the village comes there looking for the mechanic who’s supposed to know how to make houses heat up in the winter without using up all the wood of the forest. This time, the ones that have been invited will come to attend a feast. 

And oh, they’ve been preparing for it. Five whole months of preparing for the fucking wedding banquet, wasting resources on planting a _herb garden_ and fucking _flowers_. It’s kept Raven awake weeks on end, nothing to do with the wedding itself; actually, if she’s honest, all those projects had been good to keep her mind off the fact that her people had unanimously decided a wedding was absolutely necessary. 

It’s not even going to be ‘traditional’, or whatever passes for it. Clarke says, their ancestors used to do this in churches, and god knows they don’t have any one of those around. Lincoln tries to tell her about traditions when it comes to this sort of bonds in Grounder culture, but she tunes him out a little and only tunes back in when he gets interesting talking about hallucinogenic fumes. 

Two months before the wedding, messengers started coming in with word of acceptance, those who’d come from too far being invited to stay until the ceremony and feast, when they’d see their people come in anyway. It was weird, it was absolutely weird, to have Grounders around her and not be on the edge. But she’s learnt to let go, eventually, and in any case there is one Commander who does not receive an invitation; she’d know better than to come, anyway. Her people have refused, which has only saddened Octavia and Lincoln so far, but Raven doesn’t care. She can give two shits about Grounders who haven’t made it their business to try and kill her for months on end, then backstabbed her when she needed them the most. In fact, she actually likes some of the Grounders she’s met over the years, those who have come to them for help. 

Right now, if she thinks about it, there must be about ten of them in the village, sleeping in one of the empty huts; yet here she is, relaxed. 

The credit goes to Bellamy. He’s gotten consistently better at dealing with outsiders over the years, bitterness and pain paving the way to diplomacy the likes of which made even what remained of the original Council balk. And, he’s been a rock, he’s been her rock. 

He reads her well right now, even if she’s not looking at him, and nudges her with his knee. “Is it tomorrow? Because we don’t have to go.” 

She snorts softly, and looks over her shoulder at him. “It’s kind of hard to get away when it’s going to spread across the whole village, don’t you think?”

“So? We can say we got some form of stomach virus.”

“Bellamy, then Clarke will come check in.” 

He hums, weighing that. “I don’t suppose you can fake throwing up on her dress, can you? That’ll get us out of this.” 

She laughs, and shifts to lie on her back. He’s smiling down at her, unmoved, skin still covered in a thin sheen of sweat, and she traces it with her fingertips slowly. “Maybe if we’re _really_ exhausted...” 

He laughs, and lifts her hand to kiss the back of it, her knuckles, nipping at one. “You’re really optimistic about how many times I can go in one night.” 

“I mean,” she drawls, and waggles her eyebrows. “We could _try_.”

\---

It doesn’t work. Come morning, they stretch out together and what do you know, not that exhausted at all. There’s no time for the slow, reverent dressing each other ritual that has become her favourite part of each morning, after the coffee brought in from the South tribes. There’s barely time for more than four or five kisses, before Octavia bursts into the house with one hand over her eyes, and drags Raven up for the day’s preparations. Clarke needs them in her house, apparently. 

The ceremony’s all made up anyway, and will happen in the evening, but for some reason it’s been decided that men and women aren’t going to see each other until then. Some old traditions are stupid, but at least the kids are free to roam and go bother their dads, so Raven’s got one less headache to think about. 

The biggest one is getting dressed. It’s the first time she’s worn a dress, ever. She knows Octavia and Bellamy worked on it, because they’ve worked together on all the clothes their people own, putting skills Aurora Blake taught them to good use. It’s not that weird anymore to know Bellamy’s had a hand in making the shirt on her back, but this time it’s a dress, and it’s just – it’s weird. She has to wear leggings underneath, to prevent her brace from leaving marks or chafing. If flutters around her, the end of the skirt brushing the ground, and trust the Blakes to make everyone look like they belong to those Greek myths they’re so fond of. 

She has no mirror to study herself in, but Clarke, and Harper, and Octavia, and all the women who’ve at some point passed through this tent have said she looks beautiful. 

She’s trying to see what they’ve done to her face with that piece of coal (looked like coal anyway) in the back of a spoon, when she’s aware her name’s being called out. 

“What?” she asks, and flusters a little when Octavia gives her a look.

“I asked, which part do you think you’ll like the most? Of the wedding?”

“The part where it’s over and I can go to sleep,” she mutters, and hides a smile at the sound of collective groans. Come on, they know her better than this.

“There was a movie,” Clarke starts, like she’s about to tell a story, “On Alpha. One of the few that made it in our family, was some sappy movie about a girl who was a bridesmaid like fifteen hundred times or something.” She shrugs, like it’s not important, and waves the comment off. “Anyway, I remember one line from it. About how the best thing, when the bride walked down the aisle, was to watch the look on the groom’s face.” 

What a pile of sentimental trash. Weddings are stupid, anyway; were stupider before. From all the stories she’s asked for in the past five months, she’s determined that it doesn’t matter if you hold a party, sign a few papers, or swear you do in front of a god you believe in; a marriage can still break. She wishes she could point out that there are other things that make a couple strong, beyond pomp and circumstance. She wishes she could say ten years of giving everything and expecting nothing, of being back-up or being the hand that tugs you down to earth when you’re in danger of floating away, of sticking at your side even when you’re gross and sick, of being invested in the emotional and physical and mental happiness of someone, _that’s_ better than a ceremony. But the girls have already moved on, and they all get started on helping Clarke get dressed. 

\---

The village looks beautiful. She’ll give it that. The hanging lights they’ve strung up, the result of three weeks of hard work and a lot of creativity with luminescent aquatic plants and glass jars, make it look like something out of a fairytale. As soon as dusk descends, they emit their constant light, so when she steps out of the tent at last, she is left breathless by how beautiful her home is. (And it is, it’s her home now.) 

She’s not alone. 

Her people have gone all out on the efforts for this one, and she can smell the banquet they’re going to dig into later. She is, anyway, because she hasn’t had the time to eat a single thing today and she’s starved. The women fall into a line in rows of two, heading towards the forest where they’ve arranged for the ceremony to take place. Strips of white cloth – old tents and parachutes, with the fabric faded then bleached – guide their way. For a handful of criminals, they’ve gotten so creative Raven wishes she could take a picture of everything. 

Oh, the wedding is still an exaggeration, unnecessary and cheesy, but she can still appreciate beauty. And the beauty of the way to the ‘altar’ being lead by lights that look like stars. 

There is a silence that falls on everyone, as soon as the women arrive; each taking a spot next to someone. Slowly, one by one, they leave the pathway empty, Octavia and Clarke being the last two to break away from the line. And then she’s alone, and she remembers Clarke’s stupid story about that stupid movie, and she looks up ahead. 

At the end of the pathway, Bellamy is standing, looking at her with a dumbfounded look on his face, then sudden delight, then all the love in _the world_ , and she chokes up. 

_Oh, fuck._ I’m _a pile of sentimental trash_. 

But it’s a good thing. Because at least in this, too, they stand united.

**Author's Note:**

> SARPRIZE!!! 8D


End file.
